How One Volunteer-Driven Organization Uses E-Commerce for its Member Site

Swami’s Cycling Club, based in San Diego needed a way to sell gear to outfit its members, as well as fundraise for up-and-coming cyclists competing in national and international events. Before Bryon Black, a long-time Swami’s member and volunteer, discovered Ecwid, selling gear was a manual process of in-person transactions at member events that would take hours to reconcile inventory.

What Bryon needed was to add a “Members Only e-store” to the team’s membership website, and with Ecwid he was able to do just that, noting “as a volunteer organization, Ecwid will make your life completely easy and efficient — truly plug and play, and since it’s a SaaS product, I don’t need to worry about servers, hosting, or new software.”

With the typical member sales held twice a year, the organization needed a reliable and efficient way to manage their inventory of riding gear. Ecwid’s ease-of-use and accessibility also allows Bryon the ability to give other members administrative access to the store — now their financial guy, inventory manager, and president can all login and find what they need without rely on just one person to manage the storefront.

Meanwhile, at in-person events, Bryon and other volunteers are also able to sell-on-the-go.  Previously, the organization used a standard plug-in card reader, which required him to close the store since inventory was not synced.  Since then, they began using PayPal Here with Ecwid, which synchronizes the transactions and inventory, simplifying the entire process.

Swami’s used to rely on a giant spreadsheet and several man-hours to manage and organize its inventory of member riding gear. Now, with Ecwid, it only takes a couple hours and the information is more accurate and accessible by the volunteers who need it. With a little help from Ecwid, Swamis was able to turn a process that used to take several days into a process that takes a few hours, which increased efficiency, helped retain volunteers and provided a better sense of their cash flow.